Sales of new electric cars in February this year have tripled compared to the same month in 2022 – up to 413 units, which is also 40% more than in January this year, reports Ukravtoprom in Telegram channel.
According to the association on Monday, the best-seller in the new electric car market remains the Volkswagen ID.4 – 134 units.
Dong Feng (Honda) M-NV is second with 86 units, and Volkswagen ID.6 is third with 33 cars registered.
The fourth most popular model is compact Honda E (27 units), and the third one is Mercedes-Benz EQC (16 units).
According to Ukravtoprom, a total of 708 new electric cars were sold in Ukraine in January-February 2023, which is 2.6 times more than during the same period in 2022.
As earlier reported, according to Ukravtoprom, in 2022, the share of new electric cars in their total sales in Ukraine (13.6 thousand units) rose to 17% from 14% a year earlier (i.e. to more than 2.3 thousand units – IF).
The U.S. dollar is falling moderately against the euro and the yen on Monday morning, while strengthening weakly against the pound sterling.
The ICE-calculated index, which shows the U.S. dollar’s dynamics against six currencies (euro, Swiss franc, yen, Canadian dollar, pound sterling and Swedish krona), declined 0.1% during the morning session.
The euro/dollar pair was trading at $1.0646 as of 8:20 a.m. Q, versus $1.0635 at the close of last Friday’s session, with the euro adding about 0.1%.
The pound sterling is down 0.1% and is trading at $1.2031 versus $1.2043 at the close of last session.
The dollar-yen exchange rate is down 0.1% and trades at 135.76 yen.
Foreign exchange market participants are assessing the statements of the Federal Reserve (Fed) representatives, trying to predict the future trajectory of interest rates.
For example, Mary Daley, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said last weekend that the Fed rate could stay high for a long time because of sustained inflation.
“To put a period of high inflation behind us, we will probably need more monetary tightening to persist for longer,” she said during a speech at Princeton University.
The Fed’s next meeting is March 21-22.
Meanwhile, the exchange rate of the yuan traded in mainland China is 6.9102/$1, compared with 6.9074/$1 at the close of the previous session.
As reported, the Chinese government set the target growth rate for the country’s economy this year at about 5%. Meanwhile, many economists expected the target to be more ambitious.
Analysts at Swiss bank UBS raised their forecast for Chinese economic growth in 2023 to 5.4 percent from the previously expected 4.9 percent. The growth estimate for 2024 was raised to 5.2% from 4.8%.
EURO, pound, U.S. dollar, yen
Kernel, one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural holdings, bought the Danube Prom Agro river terminal in the Ukrainian port of Reni on the Danube in February 2023, according to the company’s semi-annual report.
“The terminal has flat warehouses with a single storage capacity of 12,000 tons, and the acquisition is part of the company’s strategy to provide backup options in case Black Sea ports become unavailable as a result of the March 2023 grain deal being terminated,” the agri-holding said.
It noted that it intends to continue investing in its operations in the port of Reni to expand transshipment capacity, and such investments will be attracted by the USAID Sustainable Agriculture Initiative, which has agreed to purchase and supply the equipment needed for such expansion.
In addition, Kernel announced that on March 3, 2023, it closed the sale of a number of farms with a 134,000-hectare land bank, as well as related agricultural infrastructure, equipment and working capital, to companies associated with Kernel’s largest shareholder and board chairman, Andriy Verevsky, as announced in April 2022. This was preceded in February by the final approval of creditors to complete the transaction.
Oleg Vlasenko was the beneficiary of Danube Prom Agro, according to information in the state register. The company’s revenues in 2020 were 1.86 million hryvnia, and its assets at the end of the year were 4.73 million hryvnia.
In April 2022, Kernel’s board of directors decided to divest some of its 134 thsd ha crop farms and sell the assets to Verevskyy companies for $210 mln. The company announced that it wanted to reduce business risks and improve medium-term liquidity amid Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
As reported, in the first half of FY 2023 (July-December 2022), Kernel decreased its net profit by 12.6% YoY to $370.31 million, while revenues fell by 41.3% to $1 billion 889.78 million.
Oil prices are declining Monday morning after a strong rise last week.
The price of Brent futures for May on London’s ICE Futures Exchange stood at $85.07 per barrel by 7:11 a.m., $0.76 (0.89%) lower than at the close of the previous session. Those contracts rose $1.08 (1.3%) to $85.83 a barrel at the close of trading last Friday.
The price of WTI futures for April at the electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is $78.96 per barrel by that time, which is $0.72 (0.9%) lower than the final value of the previous session. The contract rose by $1.52 (1.9%) to $79.68 per barrel on Friday.
Brent gained 3.6% and WTI gained 4.4%.
Oil prices last week were supported by optimism about the economic recovery in China and some weakening of US dollar.
Meanwhile, the number of active oil rigs in the U.S. fell by 8 units to 592 last week, oil services company Baker Hughes said. The number of rigs fell to its lowest since last September.
Ukraine needs to strengthen protection of energy facilities before the next heating season and carry out work to decentralize the energy sector, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Sunday.
“We are working through all scenarios and will do everything to approach the next winter ready for any threat. In six months, our power engineers, officials, the security and defense sector and everyone involved in the relevant tasks must do absolutely specific things,” he said.
According to the president, it is necessary “to strengthen the protection of power facilities, to restore the infrastructure that has been destroyed by Russian strikes in the past six months, to give more opportunities to our people under the power system decentralization project, so that people can generate and supply electricity on their private territory, on their private facilities. This is a big job; it has already begun.
The Kiev Municipal Clinical Oncology Center received about 30,000 patients in 2022.
As acting director of the oncology center Alexander Klusov told the agency, the clinic was able to restore the patient flow that fell after the start of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation as early as July 2022.
“In 2022, we had about 30,000 patients, only 6,000 fewer than in 2021 and actually comparable to what we had two or three years ago. Understandably, since the beginning of the active invasion, we have tried to discharge all patients except those who were in serious condition and needed inpatient medical care. The number of patients was not reduced many times as it is now in many medical institutions. We can say that we have already reached the pre-war level in July”, – he said in an interview to “Interfax-Ukraine”.
At the same time Klusov pointed out that during the last year the number of patients who come to the clinic from other regions decreased a little.
At the same time, the center actively provides medical assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs), who can receive medical care at the oncology center as well as Kyiv residents.
“We understand migration processes and try to provide medical care to everyone who needs it,” he said.
At the same time, Klusov noted that “the reform of the healthcare system allows specialized medical institutions not only to work, but also to develop.”
“We even buy diagnostic and therapeutic equipment, and our salaries are among the highest among the medical institutions of Kiev. Of course, we have the opportunity to use the funds from two budget programs – state and local budget programs, including the purchase of chemotherapy drugs. This is a very serious help, because the purchase of chemotherapy drugs requires significant resources,” he said.
